Anna Meredith's HandsFree uses clapping, stamping and beatboxing instead of
musical instruments and has its world premiere tonight.

The National Youth Orchestra will tonight perform a world premiere of Anna Meredith's HandsFree at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool.

The piece (with an exclusive preview trailer above), is a PRS for Music Foundation's New Music 20x12 project - part of the Cultural Olympiad - and is a concert performed without a single musical instrument.

Meredith, 33, one of Britain's leading young composers, said: "These amazing young musicians from the National Youth Orchestra will put down their flutes, clarinets, their cellos and then perform my piece which will be using everything apart from instruments. There will be clapping, stamping, singing, beatboxing - basically anything I can think of that avoids instruments."

Edinburgh-born Meredith, who wrote the recently acclaimed Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra, took NYO musicians into the streets of Birmingham last summer following the Cultural Olympiad commission and the group showed the public how clapping, body percussion and beatboxing (a technique sometimes used in hip-hop music, involving the art of producing drum beats and rhythm using a person's mouth, tongue, lips and voice techniques) could be used creatively to make interesting music.

The first official performance takes place tonight and the NYO will then take the concert to the Barbican tomorrow.

Meredith added: "HandsFree has to be memorised so there won't be a conventional score. We have tried out different sounds with body percussion and then working out the narrative of the piece and practical ways of making it work. There have been some surprises. Beatboxing for long periods is exhausting and It turns out that clapping for more than 30 seconds is pretty painful."